KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While some cit­i­zens with chron­ic ail­ments are be­ing told their pre­scribed drugs are un­avail­able at pub­lic hos­pi­tal phar­ma­cies, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says his min­istry is work­ing to ad­dress pro­cure­ment is­sues af­fect­ing the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP).

Speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing a blood dri­ve host­ed by the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Ro­tary Club of San Fer­nan­do and the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Bo­doe said he was sched­uled to meet with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health and the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (NIPDEC) to ad­dress the is­sues.

“The is­sue with drug pro­cure­ment is that NIPDEC, as you point­ed out, pro­cures on be­half of the Min­istry of Health. Since I came in­to of­fice, I recog­nised that there are sev­er­al is­sues with that pro­cure­ment process, and I’m work­ing to ad­dress them,” Bo­doe said.

On Thurs­day, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty was work­ing to ad­dress re­port­ed short­ages of sev­er­al med­ica­tions, in­clud­ing the breast can­cer drugs ex­emes­tane, anas­tro­zole and letro­zole, as well as some psy­chi­atric med­ica­tions.

He said the NCRHA was work­ing with NIPDEC to source the med­ica­tions, while those that re­mained un­avail­able would be pur­chased di­rect­ly from phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to en­sure pa­tients re­ceived the nec­es­sary treat­ment.

Bo­doe said one pro­cure­ment chal­lenge stems from in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply chain is­sues. How­ev­er, he said the min­istry is work­ing to strength­en pro­cure­ment and sup­ply chain process­es to en­sure med­i­cines are ac­quired in a time­ly man­ner.

“I’m try­ing to iden­ti­fy that. In fact, when I leave here this af­ter­noon, I’m meet­ing with a team from the min­istry, from NIPDEC, to ad­dress these par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges that have come up with me in the pub­lic do­main. But I want to give the pub­lic the re­as­sur­ance that the Min­istry of Health and the Gov­ern­ment are do­ing every­thing in our pow­er to en­sure the sup­ply of drugs re­mains ac­ces­si­ble. We recog­nise there are chal­lenges, and we’re work­ing to fix them.”

Asked whether there were al­so ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues, giv­en pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed cas­es of over­sup­plied drugs at NIPDEC that lat­er ex­pired, Bo­doe said he was still await­ing a full re­port on that mat­ter.

“I know there was a prob­lem in the last ten years in terms of ex­pired drugs, so all of that is be­ing looked at as part of the over­all re­view of the pro­cure­ment process and the en­gage­ment be­tween the Min­istry of Health and the Gov­ern­ment.”

Asked what CDAP users should do while short­ages per­sist, Bo­doe said the Min­istry and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) were work­ing to en­sure pa­tients re­ceived their med­ica­tion, not­ing that the RHAs could al­so make emer­gency pur­chas­es when­ev­er sup­plies from NIPDEC were un­avail­able.

He said there are 52 med­ica­tions un­der CDAP, but he could not say ex­act­ly which ones were cur­rent­ly in short sup­ply.

“I can’t say ex­act­ly the num­ber that we’re short of at this point in time, but I know it’s a small num­ber, and we’re deal­ing with that.”

‘Chit sys­tem’ hin­der­ing vol­un­tary blood do­na­tions

Bo­doe al­so out­lined plans to in­crease vol­un­tary blood do­na­tions, not­ing that the coun­try cur­rent­ly col­lects on­ly about 18,400 units of blood an­nu­al­ly, well be­low the na­tion­al tar­get of 45,000 units.

He said one rea­son for the short­fall was the coun­try’s long-stand­ing “chit sys­tem,” where peo­ple do­nate blood on­ly af­ter a friend or rel­a­tive re­quests it for a pa­tient.

“That is not a sat­is­fac­to­ry sys­tem. At the Min­istry, we are try­ing to move away from that sys­tem to make it a ful­ly vol­un­tary, non-re­mu­ner­at­ed sys­tem. We know it will take time; it’s a grad­ual shift, and it will re­quire a cul­ture change. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is al­so im­por­tant. When we launched this dri­ve in June, the in­ten­tion was to make it sus­tain­able.”

Bo­doe said he had writ­ten to near­ly 100 or­gan­i­sa­tions to en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in the na­tion­al cam­paign and said yes­ter­day’s part­ner­ship was one re­sult of that out­reach.

He added that Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to host blood dri­ves and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes across the coun­try.

He en­cour­aged el­i­gi­ble cit­i­zens to be­come reg­u­lar blood donors, stress­ing that blood do­na­tion is both safe and care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed.

“There is a screen­ing process to en­sure your blood count is good enough and that you don’t suf­fer from any ma­jor med­ical ill­ness­es. While not every­one will be el­i­gi­ble to do­nate, the great ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple can safe­ly give blood.”